I was out riding on one of those clear cold nights in December that you get. I like to ride whatever the time of year, not because I’m some kind of hero but just out of habit, I guess I don’t know any better. If you’re a cheapskate like me, you tend to ride bikes that don’t get ruined by bad weather and so you get to enjoy stuff that the cosseted bikers of today miss out on. It was one of those silver nights with a full moon and no cloud. I decided to set out late-ish from the pub to do a circuit of some of my favourite back lanes. You know no traffic, quite, a man can let his mind wander and get back in touch with the simple pleasure of riding his bike.
The route took me about twenty miles out from home and one part of the road went over an old pack bridge. It was the sort of place that you don’t get today. The road followed an old trade route that drovers used to bring cattle along and the bridge was on a bend were the road had to narrow to single-track to get over it. It had never been widened or improved over the centuries and the route had been replaced in the late sixties by a better road further away.
It would have been a little before midnight when I got to the old bridge and the bike just died on me. I mean, no warning, just blackout, dead, just the whine of the tires in crisp frost on the road. I’d got very little money as a youngster so had learned the hard way how to fix bikes, so I wasn’t really concerned that the old wreck had stopped and I’d got a lot of tools and odds and ends with me so, having pushed the bike onto the grass, started to get stuck into finding out what was wrong. I’d been at it about ten minutes when I heard the sound of another bike coming from the opposite direction. I could see his headlight swinging around the twisty road and could tell from the exhaust note that the bike was a British twin of some description. This was not unusual around here, there were a lot of diehards who refused to ride Japanese bikes and stuck with the old stuff and fair play to them. I could relate to the way they thought, I was riding a Czech 250 so who was I to talk.
The rider slowed as he came to the bridge and downshifted to come to an idle alongside me. He was decked out in full on rocker regalia from the 1960’s, again not a particularly strange thing, there were still balding teddy boys in town and was riding an old BSA.
“Alright mate”. He said
“Yeah, bloody thing just cut out on me”. I replied.
“What is it, Villiers”? He asked
“No, CZ, from Czechoslovakia”. I answered.
“Never heard of it”. He said.
He seemed a little nervous, glancing around and about, well, maybe more lost than nervous.
“Listen mate you want to get that fixed and get movin’, it’s goin' get bloody cold tonight and you don’t want to be stuck out here on your own”. He said.
I’d just found the problem, the fuse cable had been trapped under the battery and had cut through shorting out. A bit of tape and the whole thing was back running.
“Working”? He asked.
“Yes, no probs”. I said “I’m going to press on”
“Better head back the way you came mate. It’s getting late”
I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, you know thanks for stopping and all but I ride where I want to, but something in the way he looked at me chilled my soul and stopped me, the words half formed.
“OK, right”. I mumbled and started the bike.
I set of to follow him but there was no way I was going to keep up, he rode a lot faster and corned a lot harder than I was comfortable with in the conditions and pretty soon he had lost me.
I got home about an hour or so later, cold and not a little bit grateful that the fire was still burning in the grate.
A few weeks later I was in the pub with the rest of the crowd I rode with, it was near Christmas and we were all looking forward to the party season. We were talking the usual crap about the great times we’d had over the summer and arguing about what the best bikes were, when the subject of Brit versus Jap came up, as it inevitably did.
“Jap bikes are more reliable”.
“Brit bikes have more character”.
“Brit bikes break down”.
“Yeah so does your old nail”.
The last comment was aimed at me and reminded me about the breakdown I’d had at the bridge. I went of into a yarn about it and everyone listened and laughed and I got a pint out of it. All but one of the old guys who was there.
“What did the bloke look like”? He asked.
I described him.
“A Rocker, you know, silk scarf, boots, leather jacket covered in studs and badges, riding an old BSA”
“And you were by the old pack bridge”? He asked.
“Yeah”. I said “Why do you know him”.
“Well, yes and no, ‘cause the guy I think it was, you can’t have seen”.
“Why’s that”. I asked.
“Cause he crashed into the bridge in 1962 and froze to death. He wasn’t found until the new year”.
